THURSDAY, MAY 11, 2006
Friday Edition: For Mother's Day, Send Cash
The Boston Globe has discovered that the true language of love for Mom on her big day might be spoken in dollars.
The story says that many immigrant workers who are in the United States and cannot go home to be with their moms rush to money-wiring services before Mother's Day and send lots of money home.
Some centers expect a 20
to 40 percent increase in business before Sunday.
The Dorm-Room Dump
I taught a workshop on the campus of Temple University in Philadelphia this week. I could see the strain of finals on the students' faces.
In the next couple of
weeks, as students move out, campuses will be awash with crates of unneeded clothes,
electronics, furniture and fixtures that are too bulky to move home
from school.
Years ago on Al's Morning Meeting, I did a story about how this stuff just ended up in trash bins. Now, campus recycling programs have begun collecting the mountains of unwanted stuff.
In 2001, University of Michigan
students left 10 tons of stuff behind when they moved out. That
included, according to the university's news and information
department, 2,279.5 pounds of shoes, 8,572.5 pounds of clothing and
3,478
pounds of unopened food.
In 2003, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
said Penn State students tossed out 66 tons of items that were sold in a rummage sale to benefit the United Way, including
computers, monitors, a good set of golf clubs, clothes with price tags
still attached, furniture, big televisions, little televisions, hair
dryers, carpets and table fans.
"Last year, I found a wedding dress thrown out," said Fraser Grigor, assistant director for special projects at Penn State's Housing and Food Services. "You have to wonder about the story behind that."
Penn State students cast off six tons of packaged food that year, from granola bars to fruit juice.
Also in 2003, I told you :
At the end of the semester at Colby College,
students left behind scales, clocks, mirrors, lamps, ice skates,
bicycle helmets, piggy banks, paperback novels, computer printers,
stereo systems, and even a few George Foreman Grills were found in the
trash. Last year one person left a $2,000 dress with the tags still on
it.
One school wants everything recycled -- from spiral
notebooks, phone books, schedule books textbooks, office paper,
newspapers, catalogues, magazines and gift wrap to empty pizza boxes.
Out in Tacoma
on Saturday morning, folks will be sorting through the tons of stuff
students there have discarded. They used to just throw it all away. The News Tribune reports:
If you're scrambling
out of the dorms and housing at the University of Puget Sound this
weekend, you and your friends will leave behind about 150 60-gallon
bags of clothing, shoes, food, toiletries and small appliances.
The leavings ended up
in the landfill until a decade ago, when the school's facilities
director couldn't stand the waste any more. Now, if you leave it and
it's usable, it will race through Project S.A.V.E. to needy teens, kids
and families.
The Dangerous Drive Home
Bleary-eyed college
students, exhausted from finals, will be driving home soon,
sleep-deprived and dangerous behind the wheel. I have included these
tips
before -- but it is worth sending them your way again.
According to a Senate Appropriations Committee report cited by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,
about 56,000 police-reported crashes are caused by drowsy driving
annually. Two-thirds of drowsy-driving crashes are caused by people under the
age of 30, according to one NHTSA report.
Just as there are groups that fight drunk drivers, there is also a group called Victims of Irresponsible Drowsy Drivers.
The site includes these passages:
- "When
you're sleepy, your brain starts to shut down... But even before you
actually nod off, performance slips." Trying harder to stay awake may
not help. Your thinking slows, you miss signals and risk-taking
behavior increases. At 60 mph, if you close your eyes for only one
second, you've traveled 88 feet. Even worse, sleepy drivers judgment is
impaired, says Dr. Mark Rosekind, a [former] fatigue specialist at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.
- "Even
if you don't fall asleep, when you drive drowsy you drive impaired...
Your reaction time is slowed, your perception is distorted and you
don't stay in the lane as easily," says Dr. David F. Dinges, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
- "Sleep
deprivation is one of the major under-recognized killers in our
society. In the contest between the will to stay awake and the need to
sleep, sleep will always win. Too often, the driver ends up wrapped
around a telephone pole... Sleep deprivation increases the effect of
alcohol." Daniel A. Katz, M.D. Department of Neurology, Menninger
Clinic, [formerly of] Topeka, Kan.
Here is more from the National Safety Council.
Kids Want "Grandpa Cars"
The Wall Street Journal zeroes in on a new trend/fad. The hippest cars, apparently, are "grandpa cars":
Young people today
don't want their father's Oldsmobile -- they want their grandfather's.
Some of the hippest wheels for under-30 drivers today are models
commonly identified with seniors: Oldsmobiles, Buicks, Chevrolets and
Cadillacs from the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s.
From Collins Ave. in Miami Beach's South Beach neighborhood to International Blvd. in Oakland, Calif.,
teens and young adults are cruising in "grandpa" and "grandma" cars
that they have painted bright colors like lime green, outfitted with
fancy sound systems and propped up on monster-truck-style wheels.
They're sweet-talking their grandparents into giving up old cars and
offering to buy them on the spot from strangers.
Television shows,
such as MTV's "Pimp My Ride," and rappers, including Snoop Dogg, are
helping to drive the craze. There's even a new magazine, Donk, Box
& Bubble, dedicated to the tricked-out-oldie-car culture.
For U.S.
car makers, struggling to lift sales, it's a painful irony that the
models striking a chord with young buyers aren't those rolling off the
assembly lines today but rather ones made decades ago. Detroit's marketers are trying to figure out how to ride the trend without ruining it.
"The worst thing you
can do is start to promote this," says Steve Shannon, Buick general
manager. (Still, car makers are embracing the idea of marketing the
same model to two generations; see related article.)
Besides the older
models' low price tags, young people say they like the challenge of
adding features like big wheels to vehicles that weren't designed for
them. The cars are easier to work on than newer, more-computerized
versions and are sure to stand out. There's also the cool factor of
being so "out" you are "in."
Used-car lots, auto-parts stores and newspaper classified sections might all be places to localize this story.
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a
compendium of ideas, edited story excerpts and other materials from a
variety of Web sites, as well as original concepts and analysis. When
the information comes directly from another source, it will be
attributed and a link will be provided whenever possible. The column is
fact-checked, but depends upon the accuracy and integrity of the
original sources cited. Errors and inaccuracies found will be corrected.
Posted at 9:14:46 PM
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